


This fear's got a hold on me

by Ruta



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Aftermath, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character Death, F/M, Pack Dynamics, Season Finale, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-08 04:35:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18887296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruta/pseuds/Ruta
Summary: He has loved three women in his life. The first died in his arms and helped him kill the boy, let the man be born. The second was an impossible love from which he fled until he managed to resist, familiar and full of temptations. He loved the third as long as he could, a love of war, of fire and blood, but that didn't give any peace at all.But it's this woman, the woman who he shouldn't desire as he desires, the woman he promised to protect, the woman who gave him a purpose in a life he didn't want, a second chance for redemption. This woman who once was his sister and who is now family. It's Sansa that he wants, that he has chosen.(8x06 speculation. Another aftermath/ending. The child who spoke with Varys in 8x05, where did she go?)





	This fear's got a hold on me

Even in the north the ash seems to follow him as a punishment. He feels and sees it everywhere. Under the nostrils. In the snowflakes that falls from the leaden sky. In dark woolen clothes. In the wary awareness with which the lords observe him. In the impassive gaze of Arya when, raising her head from the sword resting sideways on her legs, she peers at him with young and old eyes at the same time.  
  
He arrived a fortnight ago, silent like a ghost. Since then he has walked around the castle feeling an intruder. (When he is in the South, he longs for the North, but even here now he feels out of place. Broken. What is his place? He doesn't know anymore. He doesn't know if he wants to find out.)  
  
"If you don't kill her, I'll do it," she says and goes back to sharpening Needle.  
  
"Arya," he pronounces her name with a heavy weariness that reaches his bones, "it's not so easy."  
  
"It is. Killing is easy. Choose to do it isn't. She hates Sansa, you know it. She will be the next on her list."  
  
Jon flinches while the words sink inside him. A body incinerated and unrecognizable except for copper hair. The horror and despair of that image strike him ruthless and back-stabbing. He feels the taste of ash in his mouth again and the smoke and the fire replace the familiar smell of snow. He runs a hand over his face.  
  
_Whose fault is it?_ The thought is bitter, horrible. However also true in part.  
  
"Sansa can have her faults," she replies, as if she had read his mind, (and this new ability of Arya to see through expressions and guess the thoughts behind the silences is frightening), "but she doesn't deserve to die. She loves the North. She will not let anyone else die for it."  
  
She loves the North, she said. The way she looked at him, though, as if she knew a secret, as if she were not referring to the North at all, not only at least. There is a question, simple and fast and he is about to formulate it. However, it isn't Arya who should be asked.  
  
He shakes his head. "I can't kill her," he whispers, words like boulders in his throat. "I cannot."  
  
"I know you love her."  
  
Jon laughs, a dark and hostile laugh. "Not in the way you believe."  
  
Arya's eyes are unblinking. "In what way then?"  
  
He doesn't answer.  
  
_Not in the way of wolves, but of dragons._  
  
*  
  
"You really had to, didn't you? To antagonize her. To provoke her. You couldn't help it."  
  
Sansa gives him the back. She must have heard him come in, but she didn't turn around. She is standing in front of the map of the seven kingdoms, surrounded by a myriad of missives and dispatches. Her hand hesitates nervously around a scroll. Whatever the content, it doesn't have to be appreciated.  
  
"Say it," she says, not an order, not a plea, but something halfway between defeat and empty victory. Her back usually straight as a spindle is curved. That and the fact that he can't see her face sting, screaming to his conscience of her altered countenance, the absence of the bold confidence that she always shows like an armor and above all the strangeness of feeling so close and yet so far.  
  
"You swore to never tell. You broke an oath. That doesn't make you better than a Lannister. Why did you tell Tyrion?"  
  
When she turns, he feels like he's been hit in the chest. Insomnia stains her eye sockets like soot. And her gaze, gods her eyes, chains itself to his and seems not to want to let him go.  
  
"Because you deserve a choice," she responds forcefully, quiet determination even in her raw desperation. "The freedom not to hide what you are. You could rewrite your parents' story. You could rewrite your story. Or you might not do it. But the choice is yours. It belongs to you and nobody else."  
  
Where was his choice when she decided to confide in Tyrion? How is it possible that she doesn't understand? Everything he did, every step, every word, every gesture. All made more difficult by her, who worked against him all the time. "What do you think will happen now?"  
  
"I can imagine it. She will have me executed." The small and sad smile she gives him is a stab. "If I'm lucky, you might be able to intercede for a quick death. I'd rather die like Father, by sword and not fire."  
  
"You will not die," he discovers himself saying and without realizing it he walks the few steps that separate them. He would like to shake her to wipe the desolate expression from her face, rub from her mouth the bitterness and disregard with witch she talks about her own death. Perhaps this is what drives him more, not the absence of a reaction, but the fact that even now she isn't completely sincere, she doesn't show him the tears that surely she must have cried alone, she refuses to lean on him, perhaps thinking to be a burden.  
  
_Stupid, stupid woman_ , he thinks. The desire to touch her is a physical, vital need. He grabs her by the arms and pulls her to him and through the dress he feels the tremor that shakes her.  
  
"Jon," she whispers, clawing at his jerkin and it's finally Sansa talking and breathing, a creature of blood and cracks. Not the Lady of Winterfell, icy and unreachable, courteous even in the face of her own executioner. It is Sansa who passes her arms behind his back and buries her face against his chest while he does the same, rubbing his nose in her neck, under the lobe of her ear.  
  
He hears her sigh, a tremulous sigh that suggests how stubbornly she refused to rest in the last few months, throwing herself headlong into the role of regent, protector, warrior.  
  
"Do you think we will allow it?" He remembers Arya, the deadly look that promises death. Bran and his words. Let the king be born.  
  
"You can't kill her," he hears her say. "You don't want."  
  
It is true and this sharpens the torment he feels. He has loved three women in his life. The first died in his arms and helped him kill the boy, let the man be born. The second was an impossible love from which he fled until he managed to resist, familiar and full of temptations. He loved the third as long as he could, a love of war, of fire and blood, but that didn't give any peace at all.  
  
But it's this woman, the woman who he shouldn't desire as he desires, the woman he promised to protect, the woman who gave him a purpose in a life he didn't want, a second chance for redemption. This woman who once was his sister and who is now family. It's Sansa that he wants, that he has chosen.  
  
If the war failed to do so, it will be the attempts to protect each other that will eventually destroy them.  
  
He touches her forehead with his lips, then her eyebrows, her nose, her cheeks. At a whisker from her mouth, he looks at her half-lidded eyelids. "So I should watch while she kills you?"  
  
"I wish you weren't forced to choose. It's not fair, but the world rarely is." She puts her hand against his jaw. "Don't be sorry. I played my cards and lost. I proved I was right about everything, but what does it matter to be right? I have few regrets."  
  
"Which?" He asks.  
  
"Children. I would have liked to have some. Dark hair and grey-eyed like you, Arya and Father. Redheaded and blue eyes like Mother, Robb and Rickon."  
  
He can imagine them and it's this new wish, the awful agony of her wrenching expression that makes him say, "You can still have them if you want."  
  
She shakes her head and the tears in her eyes breaks his heart.  
  
*  
  
_Where did we get lost? There was a moment when we walked along the same path and we were so close that I could touch your hand._  
  
_Around us the roaring sound of thunderous applause, the silence of triumph, the smell of home. Even with the war on the doorstep, you were with me. Where did I lose you? When exactly did our roads split?_  
  
_South is the answer._  
  
_You never came back and even if you are here, your heart has remained where I cannot reach it. One part is here with me, the other is with her._  
  
"There was a time when you were mine," she says, moving away from him slowly, blinking away her weakness. "Before being hers. It no longer matters. The north is yours, my lord. Keep looking at it for me."  
  
*  
  
"The greatest danger is the dragon. With that removed, it would be easy to dethrone her," Davos is saying.  
  
"Let's not forget the Unsullied," Arya intervenes.  
  
"If we neutralize Drogon-"  
  
"It's impossible," says Jon. "He is always with her."  
  
"I can help with that." Everyone turns to Bran. His gaze is fixed on him and it's to him that he turns when he says, "You will have a chance and only a shot. Do you think you can do it?"  
  
Jon grimaces. "Do I have any other choice?"  
  
Bran doesn't blink. "Not if you want to save them both."  
  
*  
  
The fight is over. Drogon lies dead behind the throne. He died, killed by his sword, not before he melted the iron throne. Now his head lies ten feet away from them, in a pool of blood. In that same puddle, he finds himself, in his arms the increasingly cold and pale body of Daenerys.  
  
This time there is no arrow planted in her chest.  
  
Poison, Arya said when she saw her coughing up blood.  
  
"You're not dying," he reassures her, lying. He puts his hand on her cheek and without turning, he barks to his right, "Find a Maester!"  
  
With the same delicacy of the first time, he dries another trickle of blood. Her lips are red. "You will be fine. The wound is not deep. You will heal."  
  
She smiles and in her eyes the crazy light is finally relegated. She is excatly like the first time he's seen her. "You know, you're not very good at it. You're a worthless liar. I don't know how I managed not to notice it before."  
  
He swallows. "I -"  
  
"You will be a good king."  
  
This is the last thing he wants to hear right now. "I don't want that goddamned throne," he says and feels like he hasn't said anything else in the last few months.  
  
With the few strengths left, she raises her hand to rest it against his cheek. He grabs it, keeping it in place. "And despite this, now it's yours. It can't be avoided. This is your destiny, as it was for me. Now you will understand what it feels like to be the last Targaryen."


End file.
